Hello! My name is Leena, I’m a junior studying marketing and doing a certificate in digital media, and I am super excited to be participating in Pitt’s Global Service-Learning program this semester.

As an avid volunteer and a lover of all opportunities to gain a more global perspective, hearing about this study abroad experience was definitely intriguing on a personal level. I have always enjoyed helping others and giving back, pursuing several extracurricular activities at the university that allowed me to mentor peers, work in the local community, and learn along the way. That the nonprofit client we’re working with in country, CEOLI, assists children with disabilities made it even more relevant to me, as I am very interested in working in the healthcare/pharmaceutical space once I’m out of school, and the opportunity to learn more about the landscape of the industry and how I can make an impact on an international level is both unique and exciting. In addition, my family introduced me to world travel early on, and I’ve had the pleasure of visiting several countries both as a tourist and even as a study abroad student, so I definitely embraced this program as another way to broaden my horizons, learn more about a culture, and go somewhere I never thought about traveling before. Now that I’m starting to think more about my post-grad path, I was also looking for as many courses that would expose me to more meaningful, practical work that would be relevant to my professional career, so the fact that I am able to combine all of these benefits with GSL Bolivia made it a perfect fit for me, and I jumped at the chance!

Going into the program, I have a few goals across personal, professional, academic, and cultural aspects. First up, this is my first semester doing a real-world consulting project, and after learning about the beautiful years-long partnership Pitt has built with these NGOs, I definitely want to keep nailing these deliverables as top of mind. I have never been responsible for such a crucial task before, even at my previous internships, and I’m hoping to build up some new skills along the way and really go above and beyond with our execution, especially since we will be concentrating on objectives that fall outside the scope of my major. Second, I want to get out of my comfort zone, as an individual and on an immersive level. Part of what makes this opportunity unique is that it champions experiential learning, especially when it comes to understanding the host country, so I’m looking forward to the different activities on the trip portion and exploring everything I can about Bolivia, especially since this will be the first time I have been to South America. Finally, I want to get as much professional benefit out of this program as possible, from putting the experience on my resume to practicing even more networking and project management skills. Since my goal is pharmaceutical marketing, especially after my internship last summer, where I did a combination of PR and communications work alongside patient advocacy programming, I certainly want to leverage all the unique transferable knowledge I’ll develop from this class as a way to stand out in the recruitment process.

Overall, I’m already counting down the days until we get to meet the people behind CEOLI in person, and I can’t wait! Working with my team has been super valuable, and we’ve learned so much about being adaptable and client interaction, which has only made me enjoy the consulting piece of the course even more. So far, we’ve also made some very cool progress towards our project deliverables, and it’s only been a few weeks, so I’m looking forward to adding on to our momentum as we approach the travel component of the program.